I got to know 'Rani Bai' about four months ago. She came across as a woman with few choices but not one to admit they were not her plan after all. And all is a lot. 

On the other side of her childhood, cut very short by debt and tradition, she found herself thrashing through a world that didn't care for her opinion and is trying very hard to crush her under the relentless wheels of hypocrisy. But she refused to be crushed. Her voice only seemed to grow louder. 

Thrust into the arms of an outlawed  tradition, she found that being a Devdasi was not what it once was. It no longer commanded the position of respect it once did. But in the decrepit ruins of the ancient culture of the body for the worship of God, stood the one profession looked upon as the very worst by collective society: prostitution. And so it began. The life of fighting against prejudice.

She managed to make a strong point. All that she says comes from her with the sting of slap but it's only so because we believe in the opposite. She's not one to mince words. She likens all sort of selling to the 'peddling' she's accused of. So whether its your talent that you sell to the team you play for, or it's your skill set that you're offering on rent to the company you work for. It's all a trade, remember? 

You get money for your services, and she for hers.

Prostitution. Is it that much of a dirty, stinking, stain on the face of civil society?

Is it so much of a bother to accept that these women are offering a service that the social system of marriage was constructed for, but failed to ensure? Are they bad? Or are the men that misuse their availability and then their bodies bad? Is it them that needs to suffer for something that could have been righted by a little bit of communication and a little less of blind belief in the ancient outlook?  

Inspired by Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India by William Dalrymple and White Noise by Hina Sid